The Best Way To Store Beans

I believe this is one of the best ways to store beans for long term storage.

To store beans beyond one year, here’s what I do:

The reason I say it’s “one of the best ways” is because it allows me to store a large variety of beans and legumes without having to buy large bulk quantities of each variety to be stored in 5-gallon pails with Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers (unless I particularly want to keep 50 pounds or more of one type of dry bean or another of course…).

This method costs some, and it increases the cost per pound to store the beans, but in my opinion – it’s irrelevant for the purpose of long term food storage and preparedness.

Since we like a variety of beans (rather than buying a 50 pound sack of one type of bean for example) we buy them at the grocery store in their 1-pound packages.

Like I said, we enjoy a wide variety of beans (legumes) and this enables us to pick and choose what we store ahead in a diversified way.

As you can see in the picture, to store them, we first vacuum seal each individual one-pound bag of beans with our FoodSaver and vacuum seal bags.

Besides the initial outlay for the cost of a FoodSaver (which we’ve had for quite some time and use it on all sorts of things – paying for itself already), the cost is that of a vacuum seal bag.

Each bag costs about 50-cents, which does increase the per-pound cost of the beans fairly dramatically (percentage wise). However this cost is miniscule when considering what you’re doing (storing ahead for emergency). Plus, the cost of food is only going to continue to rise, so the more you acquire at today’s prices, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

I also believe that to store beans this way (vacuum sealed with a FoodSaver type sealer), may be better for shelf life longevity than that of storing a bulk quantity of beans in a Mylar bag (with an oxygen absorber) in a 5-gallon bucket.

Reason being – it appears to me that a kitchen vacuum sealer removes more air than an oxygen absorber packet. The 1-pound bags of beans are really tight – hard as a brick with no air left inside. On the other hand, Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers (in 5-gallon buckets) don’t seem to draw out as much air comparatively. Sure, more O2 absorbers would help, but that’s just my general instinct…

As you can also see in the picture above, in a single heavy duty Sterlite 70-Qt plastic bin I can easily hold 50 pounds of individually sealed bags of beans. That’s a-lot of beans. They will store well for many years. I estimate 5 years without issue. Even then, probably no problem with just some extra soak time for the aged beans…

Just think about it – with just two bins of beans, you’re looking at 100 pounds. That will go a long way (with rice and/or other ingredients) in your emergency meal plans!

Again, I think this is one of the best ways to store beans for the long term because it enables you to buy and store a variety – which would be particularly important to avoid food fatigue in a SHTF situation.

On the other hand, if your intention is to store large quantities of beans for lots of people, then the traditional method of filling 5 gallon buckets with bulk ordered beans (and sealing them with oxygen absorbers) is going to be more cost effective (per pound) and quicker to accomplish.

42 Comments

It may be that it appears to suck out most the oxygen by volume, but I’m wondering if it just doesn’t appear to be as tight in the mylar bags because there’s still nitrogen and other gases that make up air (unless you vacuum out your mylars?). Just speculating, I think you’re safe either way. ðŸ™‚ Thanks for the tips!

my exact thought. An oxygen absorbor is not designed to remove air it is designed to remove oxygen. Not saying vacuum sealing won’t do the same thing but you are talking apples to oranges. Maybe an absorbor and vacuum sealing

We also store dry beans using the Foodsaver vacuum system.I also store coffee in their own foil bags. Can’t get by without my coffee! I also use it seal my “fish” antibiotics for storage and extra prescription medicine I have saved. It is a good investment. It is the best way to keep leftovers and not waste food.

I’ve been working on a different method for storing beans. I already have buckets and vacuum sealed individual pound packages, and home canned. I wanted a method that would cut down on the cook time of the beans, so here’s what I’m doing: Cook a big pot of beans with whatever seasonings or meat added, then dehydrate the cooked beans, crumble the chunks into a mason jar and seal with the foodsaver. When you need to use them, you can just add boiling water to reconstitute. I am now working out just how much water to add to a quart jar.

We found a “foodsaver-type” of roll, that was far less expensive than the brand-name bags(we do have a food saver, it’s great). The roll so far, has worked well slightly more work, but far less waste. Found it at a “Sportsmans Warehouse” store, I would assume other smaller chains would have the same kind of product. Rolls are also in stock at Sams and Costco.

Nope, wouldn’t do it that way. Oxygen, moisture and heat are what degrade food over time. The FoodSaver can pull a vacuum in the area of 18-19 inches of mercury (in-Hg) out of a perfect vacuum which at sea level under “standard” conditions (temperature and barometric pressure) would be 29.92 in-Hg. So it gets most of the air out but not all. Furthermore, polyethylene bags are more permeable than aluminized Mylar bags so over time, moisture and oxygen will make it’s way into a plastic bag. That is a key function of an O2 absorber, to neutralize the oxygen that does ingress through the plastic.

Personally, I seal my wheat, rice, beans etc this way. I use a 20×30 inch Mylar bag inside a 5 gal pail. Fill it with grain, etc. Add O2 absorbers. Then I push a tube to the bottom of the bag that is connected to an argon gas tank (can be any inert gas such as nitrogen, neon, CO2, helium, etc. I just have argon for my welder) and purge the bag from the bottom driving the air out. Hold a lighter over the bag and when the fame goes out you know the air is mostly out. Seal the bag. Flush/purge the 5 gal pail with argon (it’s heavier than air and why it’s used as a welding shielding gas to keep oxygen away from molten metal during the weld), throw an other absorber on top and seal the lid. Good for 30 years or more if kept in cool location.

Why is this better. We don’t have negative pressure in the bags increasing the rate of permeation of O2 through the plastic. Mylar is better than polyethylene. We get more oxygen out to start with than by vacuum. We have an absorber to get the residual plus any ingress O2. The sealed 5 gal pail with absorber provides a secondary seal. If you recall the concept of osmosis from biology class, the migration of substances thru a membrane is affected in great measure by the concentrations of the solute on each side. Keeping H2O and O2 levels low in pail drives way way down the osmotic pressure to push oxygen and moisture thru the bag into the beans. Want another data point? Look at MountainHouse freeze dried food in pouches. Shelf life is roughly 6-7 years, but when those come sealed in a pail with O2 absorbers they claim 20+ years. Hmmm…

But that’s just me being a nerdy engineer and that is how I do it. YMMV.

To be honest, this is all Greek to me so I don’t really understand how it works.. but, is it possible to combine both methods and obtain variety by using 1/2 – 1 gallon containers instead of 5 gallon containers?

To be clear, and so that I’m not misunderstood, this article is not a comparison between using FoodSaver vacuum sealed bags versus oxygen absorbers in sealed Mylar bags (both methods work well – I use them both as I’m sure many of you do too). It’s not about if one method is better (for the food) than the other.

Instead, I’m making the case for using an ordinary kitchen vacuum sealer (vacuum sealed bags) in order to practically store a reasonable variety of dry beans and legumes for long term food storage (by sealing individual 1-pound bags).

Rice and wheat on the other hand are basically just that – rice, and wheat (unlike the wide variety of dry beans and other legumes). Rice (only use white rice) and wheat (I store hard red wheat berries) are typically purchased in bulk and are perfect for storing in 5-gallon pails (in a Mylar bag with 2,000cc oxygen absorber and about 1-cup of food grade diatomaceous earth mixed in well).

Back to the FoodSaver vacuum sealer…
Take a look at that bag in the picture above.
See how it’s completely crinkled and ‘sucked in’?

In fact if you’ve ever tried it, you know that it basically turns to a ‘brick’ because there’s no air left to keep the stuff inside loose.

There’s no air left in the bag. Zilch. That includes no oxygen. It’s like being in space. No air. No oxygen. No nitrogen (although nitrogen doesn’t really affect the food badly).

Like someone said earlier, you do need to keep an eye on the bag to be sure it holds the vacuum over time. I know that cheap vacuum sealer bags may have a tendency to lose it’s vacuum or not seal well to draw air out as well to begin with. The bag may also become punctured from handling.

As long as there’s a vacuum in the bag, there’s no oxygen, no nothing (other than a miniscule fraction of a percent based on the capability of the vacuum pump itself).

Ken wrote:
“Thereâ€™s no air left in the bag. Zilch. That includes no oxygen. Itâ€™s like being in space. No air. No oxygen. ”
“As long as thereâ€™s a vacuum in the bag, thereâ€™s no oxygen, no nothing (other than a miniscule fraction of a percent based on the capability of the vacuum pump itself).”

Those statements are only valid with a perfect vacuum. As noted before, the FoodSaver can only pull a vacuum of 18-19 inHg not a perfect vacuum. That means it can reduce the absolute pressure about 2/3s. Ken does very good getting the science right so it likely just slipped his mind from high school science the ideal gas law, PV=NRT. Pressure x volume = number of molecules x gas constant x absolute temperature. So from this we know the the relationship for pressure and amount of gas is directly proportional. Drop the pressure 2/3s and the amount of oxygen will drop 2/3s. The remaining 1/3 isn’t zilch, zero, etc. Oxidation can still occur, just a lot less of it. The other thing that is worth noting is the volume is reduced as the bag is squeezed tight around the beans by ambient air pressure. This does help a lot. But oxygen and water vapor does slowly migrate right thru the plastic over time. For long term storage absorbers to neutralize it are wise.

Yes, I agree, ‘Zilch’ is not entirely accurate – it would take one hell of a vacuum pump to pull it down to the zilch of space ðŸ˜‰

I’m still going to continue to use my FoodSaver and vacuum seal bags for things which are appropriate for me. Individual one-pound bags of dry beans is one of them (for the reasons mentioned in the article). In fact, with dry beans being what they are, they’re not going to spoil like other things would, so it’s not rocket-science to keep them edible for many years – even without sealing them up…

Ken
I want you to know that I really appreciated this article. For the ‘newbies’ like myself, these discussions back and forth on the best way to do things is very discouraging. I don’t own a food saver and the thought of 5 gal. buckets, oxygen absorbers, and dia…’something’ earth(?) is just too daunting to think about yet. We’re still at the point of storing small amounts at a time. I’ve filled quart mason jars w/ various beans, rice, and pasta and then covered the jars w/ black construction paper to keep out light. We also try to keep cans of ham, corned beef, etc. to go with the beans. My guess is that we have about 6-8 weeks of these meals. I’m not mad at any of you for trying to improve your preps, just don’t frustrate the new people. I figure anything is better than nothing and trying is better than just giving up.

Anyway, I enjoy this site very much and the ideas presented here. Just don’t make the newbies feel that what they’re doing is useless.

in the meantime, I/we have built up pretty darn good stocks of ready canned/dried/etc.. Pretty much all purchased on stupid cheap sales. If needed, we would be “good” for quite some time.

absolutely, “something is better than nothing”, pretty much how I started out. but, I do aspire to do more, some day, and all this back and forth info makes me much better prepared to assess viabilities of various techniques. For example, Ken’s experience with the freeze dried strawberries, which he purchased sealed in cardboard, makes me realize some containers are much better than others.

I vacuum seal a lot of stuff and purchase good quality bags from filmtechcorp03 on ebay. They are dirt cheap compared to what you would pay for the same item in any local store and they are really good quality bags.

Very cool article. This is also the same way that I do mine. When I first started, I was using the mylar bags and CO2 absorbers, but ever since I got the Foodsaver, everything gets sealed in Foodsaver wrap. I think the one pound bag is good too because (depending on Family size), you may not need a whole 5 gallon bucket full of beans at a time, and by opening it, you break the “seal” which you may or not be able to re-seal in a survival scenario.

I have had issues with my vacuum sealed bags leaking after being stored for a while. Things with sharp or irregular edges. I was thinking of trying to use the old soda bottles with oxygen absorbers. Has anyone had success with that method?

I have been re-using all types of bottles, soda bottles, OJ, vitamin, etc. for years. I put water in 2 liter, beans and rice in every size. Never have put any Oxygen absorb. or anything in them. Have done this for about 7 years. Currently putting laundry soap and shampoo in small juice type bottles. When bartering, I don’t want to trade large amounts of everything. Vitamin bottles for seed saving.

@NCArmySurplus: I too, wanted to save money on the Foodsaver bags, and ordered cheaper rolls from the Filmtech Co. from Ebay. After sealing a lot of food in both the Foodsaver and Filmtech bags, I found that after about two years in the deep freezer, the cheaper filmtech bags lost their seal a lot. There were a few instances of seal loss on the Foodsaver bags as well, but most of the lost seals were with the filmtech bags. When it comes to food safety, I’d never use those cheaper bags again. Some things can be substituted with cheaper brands, such as the beans themselves, but not food security. I now stick to Foodsaver bags only. This month, as a matter of fact, if you go to coupons.com, there are $2 off coupons on the rolls. You can print two of them, I did. I hope my experiment helps you and others?

Do you pour the beans out of the original bag into the food saver bag….since there seems to be air in those bags. From the picture though, it shows the original label inside the food saver bag….I guess my question is how do you get the air out of the original bag? thanks

We keep the beans in the original 1-pound bag and simply slice several slits into the bag to enable the vacuum sealer (and the vacuum seal bag) to do it’s job of removing the air inside. This way, we can easily identify what bean variety is inside by the ability to see through the vacuum seal bag.

Seems you could easily use the inert gas method during vacuum sealing if you were worried about the tad bit of oxygen that might be in the cracks between the beans.

Also cheap bags prob loose their seal mainly because of movement of the bags in the freezer though the denser plastic does seem to hold things much longer in the freezer I’m not sure you’d loose as much product with the cheaper bags if they were stored at warmer temps and stored in 5gal buckets. (Gimmie a few more years to test this theory) lol

So i was was wondering if anyone had input how these methods measure up to dry canning rice/bean combos? Is oven canning as efficient? I have a food saver and actually never thought of this- but i havent seen my bags perform as well as a jar has. Thoughts? Thanks!

One reason I use mason jars for dry goods is I can reseal with the vacuum after every use and the jar doesn’t shrink!!–not so with a plastic bag, where a couple inches is lost each time bag is cut, opened, and resealed.

Those mason jars will always hold the same amount regardless of how many times opened. And, the lids will be reused for vacuum sealing or canning.

@ JJ
I agree JJ, I use 1/2 gallon Ball Jars for the “everyday” use, have a rack built in the kitchen for them, I pop the lid, use what I want, that reseal with the good old Seal-A-Meal. I always reuse the old/existing lids for this, no need to use a new one.
NRP

You don’t need to spend a lot of money on a ‘Seal-a-Meal’ system. Over the last year I have purchased 5 of them from my local Goodwill store, all for under $5 each. They work perfectly. Also, the ‘knock-off’ bags as just as good as the name brands and save you money.

I sold my foodsaver when their own rep said it was ‘normal’ for the bags to lose vacuum and for long term storage I should rebar/resell every six to nine months. That’s when I started looking at chamber vacuum sealers like the vp120(?). I can see liquids without leakage, the vacuum can be varied, the seal can be varied, mason jars can be sealed using the same foodsaver attachments or the jars can be sealed inside the chamber depending on size. Once I did the cost comparison between the bags, I became a convert. Pennies vs quarters. The machine costs considerable more; however I’ve paid off that difference in the first year just on the difference between the bag costs. I don’t hesitate to vacuum seal the little things out of concern for cost.

On topic: I buy my dried beans in bulk directly from a heritage grower. Then the various beans are divided and sealed depending on recipe or weight. I end up with bricks at 25lb pressure. Three years on and everything is still solid bricks with no sign of leakage, no softness of product.

I found a lost trout in the freezer. Date indicated nearly 34 months. In its frozen state it looked freshly frozen. Once cooked, there was no deterioration in taste or flesh. Check out some YouTube video on chamber vacuum sealers.